Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
The Obama Administration is going full tilt when it comes to pressuring Americans into accepting the idea of gender identity and is now pressuring hospitals who receive Medicare and Medicaid funds into providing services based on a patient’s perceived gender or risk losing their funding.
According to the Advisory Board, a healthcare consulting firm, in addition to issuing a letter last Friday imposing “guidance” on schools regarding students with gender identity, at the same time the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) quietly released a final rule under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that bans insurers and providers from denying health care on the basis of gender identity.
Individuals “must be treated consistent with their gender identity, including in access to facilities,” the rule says.
Like the guidance issued to public schools, the new rule is relying on a radical interpretation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex which LGBT activists and others now insist applies to a person’s perceived gender as well as their biological gender. And those surgeries are very risky, Hastings Law Firm, Medical Malpractice Lawyers can help any person that is going through this to get better results.
There’s a reason why this rule was issued so quietly. Taxpayers will not be happy to hear that the government is now forcing health care providers to include gender transition treatments, such as sex reassignment surgery, or risk losing Medicare and Medicaid funding. In other words, Americans will now be forced to pay for this madness.
But it gets worse. There’s no religious exemption. The rule states that there was no need to provide one because the law already protects religious institutions. If those laws were enough, the Little Sisters of the Poor would not have been forced to seek justice from the Supreme Court this year.
“By prohibiting differential treatment on the basis of “gender identity” in health services, these regulations will penalize medical professionals and health care organizations that, as a matter of faith, moral conviction, or professional medical judgment, believe that maleness and femaleness are biological realities to be respected and affirmed, not altered or treated as diseases,” writes Ryan T. Anderson for The Daily Signal.
Dr. Jane Orient
The new regulations will also force doctors to perform procedures that have been proven to be ineffective.
“The regulations create special privileges based on gender identity that will lead to unreasonable and costly litigation for physicians, hospitals, insurers, and others involved in health care. They will effectively require controversial procedures, such as ‘sex-reassignment’ surgery, that respected medical professionals argue have not been proven to be effective in treating serious mental health conditions. Rather than respect the diversity of opinions on sensitive and controversial health care issues, the proposed regulations endorse and enforce one view.”
Those who are aware of this underhanded rule change are reacting as furiously as the country did to the education guidance that is now forcing our schools to allow boys into girls bathrooms and locker rooms.
“What kind of country forces Marines to scavenge parts to keep their planes flying, but has no problem paying for new parts for the gender-confused?” asks Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council.
Using the ACA for social engineering purposes is precisely “why the health care law is so dangerous,” Perkins continues. “It empowers the government to practice politics — instead of empowering others to practice medicine. Making matters worse, the price tag of this kind of surgery is estimated at anywhere from $58,000 to $70,000 — a steep price for anyone to pay, let alone taxpayers.”
Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, faults the government for “presuming to dictate medical ethics” rather than allowing doctors to make their own judgements.
“Transgender treatment, especially to minors, inflicts irreversible harm on persons too young to consent. It constitutes radical, nonconsented social experimentation. Chemical or surgical castration should be considered a crime against humanity. Affirming a patient’s delusions (e.g. that he really is a she) is considered psychiatric malpractice in other contexts,” she told Breitbart.
Such a rule will lead conscientious doctors and hospitals to stop accepting Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements from the federal government in order to be free to conduct their medical practices using their own ethics and consciences as their guide.
“To preserve their integrity and avoid being an accessory to crimes against humanity, doctors and hospitals will have to turn down the government money,” she explained. “This will also free them from a suffocating burden of costly regulations, enabling them to offer superior care at a fraction of today’s prices–and to preserve patient privacy.”
There must be a better way to protect certain minority classes of people without inflicting so much pain and suffering upon the majority. This is the kind of governance one expects from demagogues, not from the leaders of a free society!
